


There's an end

by ClaraCivry (Kat_Of_Dresden)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Heavy Angst, Loneliness, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Whump, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Sadness, seriously Five is hurt and very sad, stab wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:15:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29593359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_Of_Dresden/pseuds/ClaraCivry
Summary: For the bad things happen bingo prompt: Neglect/abandonmentThey've left Five in an alternate timeline, injured. He's quite sure they are not coming back.Just some of Five's thoughts as he's left behind by his family
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & The Hargreeves (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 129





	There's an end

He was bleeding out from a stab wound in his stomach, leaning back against a wall in the ruins of an abandoned warehouse, letting the tears fall free since there was no one around who would think less of him.

He probably should have known.

But no matter how many nightmares he had of being trapped back in the apocalypse, back in isolation, after he got back to his family... A big part of him thought that he was safe, that it was not going to happen again. That it didn't have to happen again - that it wouldn't, because he had people that had his back, just like he had theirs.

He had probably overestimated the affection his siblings felt for him. After all, he'd been thinking about them and they had been his main force for survival, but it didn't guarantee that the opposite was true. In fact, it wasn't. He was but a faint childhood memory who'd come back meaner to screw with their lives. No wonder they'd ditched him the first chance they had.

Maybe that wasn't fair. It had been a difficult choice, he understood, and leaving without him was the only way they could make it. He also heard Vanya screaming for him and Diego's determined but probably useless "we'll come back for you". No. They weren't coming back for him, that portal had been a one-time thing, now he was stuck in a pocket of a timeline that was never going to happen for them, completely inaccesible.

And they left him here.

Five figured he should be content, satisfied. He had saved his siblings, and without him around there was probably no reason for the commission or any other space-time assassin to be after them. Hell, they were in the correct timeline and there was no apocalypse looming over them. He'd made it, he should be happy.

But he couldn't help being a bit hurt. Through most of his life, he'd thought of them and, sometimes in a subliminal level, he thought that they were thinking of him, too. He thought that when he saved them he would get to live life with them, have a life of his own, a life in which he didn't have to be so excruciatingly, mind-numbingly alone. Some good years. He'd been naive to think so. He always ended back alone.

He'd spent most of his life alone, with only the hallucinated words of a mannequin in his head for company. When he was recruited by the commission, he'd worked alone as well. Five figured that no one wanted to work with him - probably a good decision on their part. Would spare them... would spare them the horrors of having to be with him, he guessed.

Maybe it was the "I'm dying after my family who I fought for my whole life decided to abandon me" situation that was making him a bit too melodramatic. But who cared anymore? He was tired of being strong, he had been strong for so long, even when he so badly wanted to give up, for them, just so them... They left him. Abandoned him. Decided that this was the best outcome for everyone, for the family.

So maybe he had no place in the family after all, he'd never had it. All his fantasies of being welcomed back, of having people to talk to, people that liked him and enjoyed his company... Had been nothing but that, fantasies. He'd been gone for more than he'd been with them, and when he'd come back he'd been this bitter old man wearing their kid brother's face.

He had no space in their lives, or in anyone's, to be honest. He was bothering and creating issues everywhere he went. He was rude and dismissive and a drunkard, and didn't know how to dance. A now he was a being a whiny little bitch on top of everything. But could you blame him? The best years of his life had been being manipulated into becoming a child soldier. That was the best part. You could imagine how the rest of them were.

Since he was dying, Five wanted to at least go with a nice image, a nice memory.

.... but nothing was coming to mind.

Because all his life had been tainted by violence, loneliness, pain, horrors, even more loneliness. And now he was to going to go alone as well, after having fought for so long, mission accomplished but no down time. It was for the better, probably. Without anything to do all of his ghosts and traumas would be able to come out, and that wasn't something he wanted. He also didn't want his siblings to see him drink himself to death to stop the nightmares.

Maybe this was the best outcome. Five only wished that it didn't hurt this much.

Because he knew not to hope for a rescue, as much as Diego had tried to convince him. Literal decades had taught him that if he wanted to be saved, he would have to do it himself. He'd been hopeful, at first. He'd been a kid, and he had a family with a colourful variety of supernatural abilities.

He thought they would find him. He thought they would scourge all of time and space for him, and that they wouldn't stop until they did find him, and rescue him from that hell he was living in. But when he came back, he found out that everyone had gone on with their lives, avoiding his portrait on the mansion, trying not to think about him too much. That hurt too.

In the apocalypse, as a kid and then a lonely adult, he often imagined his return, as a way to give himself hope, find some energy, get some metaphorical emotional warmth. He imagined the others smiling, the others cheering and just being so terribly happy that he was back. They pampered him, they hugged him, they made him meals, they told him how much they missed him.

It was what little comfort he could find in his solitary life, and it sometimes even managed to make him smile, even in the cold, surrounded by ash and decay and nothing but unending stretches of nothingness. It brought him hope, it felt... like it was going to be one of the greatest moment in his life. He worried a bit that they wouldn't recognise him, but he would tell them, and they would believe, and it would be a wondrous reunion. The stuff of legends.

As time went by he became colder, and the fantasies were put aside. But the hope was always there. 

And when he actually managed, he actually came back... His time-travelling body mishap made sure everyone recognised him and still, his return was cold, rude, unpleasant. No one even came close to him. They looked at him as if he were a stranger. (Nobody said that they'd missed him).

Shit, he'd wanted to go with something nice and only got the opposite. Maybe it was fitting, since no part of his life had really been sweet, or really nice. At least the others were safe, wherever they were, and probably wouldn't be crushed by his loss. He closed his eyes, tried to think of a song, the smell of coffee, a familiar laugh.... Something comforting.

"He's there!" someone was saying in the background, with a faintly familiar voice.

"Fuck, there's too much blood, fuck!!"

There were some other voices, some calling his name, some just rushing and hoping they weren't too late.

Allison. Klaus. Diego.

Huh.

So he was hallucinating himself a rescue mission, just like he had a life companion.

Good.

He would focus on their voices, real or imagined, and ignore the pain and the loneliness.

One last fantasy of having people come for him.

One last fantasy of people being happy to see him.

Five half-smiled, his bloodied hands falling.

One last reunion.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for clicking and reading! Hope you enjoyed :)
> 
> If you did, you know you want to comment!


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